Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,
between "green thread"
and "broccoli" you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."
Resting on the page, the word
is as beautiful, it touches you
as if you had a friend
and sunlight were a present
he had sent you from some place distant
as this morning -- to cheer you up,
and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing,
that also needs accomplishing
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds
of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder
or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue
but today you get a telegram,
from the heart in exile
proclaiming that the kingdom
still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,
- to any one among them
who can find the time,
to sit out in the sun and listen.

I stumbled across this poem today, in a book given to me by a friend in
Afghanistan, where I now live, and where the stream of news is endlessly
depressing. It was a reminder, that each one of us, whereever we live,
needs a gentle prod to remember that within the daily grind of modern
life, "pleasure/ is a thing / that also needs
accomplishing."
This poem is from Tony Hoagland's first anthology Sweet Ruin, and is
perhaps the most unalloyed and directly sweet poem he has written, in
contrast to much of his other work which addresses the bitter humour of
disillusion and the heart's struggle to clamber over the accumulated
detritus of disappointment -- and does it with a light humourous touch.
Sweet Ruin won the 1992 Brittingham Prize in Poetry and Hoagland has
since published two other books, Donkey Gospel, and What Narcissism
Means to Me. On the back of the last book it said he teaches at the
University of Houston, but I wasn't able to check online from here today.
Rachel.

Thank you Rachel for submitting this poem. It was just the poem I waslooking for to send onto my sister who is being swamped by her 'to-do-list' before Winter comes. I really like the way this poet uses theimmediate world around us and gets us to look at it and use it in adifferent way. Wonderful.Cheery,Lois

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I think today's poem comes at a very relevant time, as it speaks to many students such as myself who are struggling to find a balance between mid-term obligations and the new sunlight spring brings. The personal impact of this poem on me was further amplified by its use of the second-person pronoun "you".

As Lois above states, the way the poem uses images of the immediate world around us is really nice. I also enjoy the way it begins very concretely, employing the image of words on a "to-do list", and then flows into a more philosophical discussion about the purpose of our daily chores. A soft and pleasant reminder not to get carried away by our quotidian duties and "to sit out in the sun and listen".

Here's an interesting aside, since the poem starts with a shopping list on which is written the word 'sunlight'. Sunlight is a brand of soap. The owner of the soap factory built a village for his workers. Today it is something of a visitor attraction. It is on the Wirral in Cheshire (UK). The place is called Port Sunlight.

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I stumbled onto this blog today and am extremely pleased about it. Wonderful collection of poems and nice to know the history of the poem and the poet. (Although I must say the poem's font is a little difficult to read) Why is there no 'about you' section in the blog? I'm curious...

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Anthony Dey Hoagland is an American poet and writer. His poetry collection 2003, What Narcissism Means to Me, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other honors include two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts,

He was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. His father was an Army doctor, and Hoagland grew up on various military bases throughout the South. He was educated at Williams College, the University of Iowa (B.A.), and the University of Arizona (M.F.A.).

In an interview with Miriam Sagan about his poetic influences, Hoagland said, "if I were going to place myself on some aesthetic graph, my dot would be equidistant between Sharon Olds and Frank O’Hara, between the confessional (where I started) and the social (where I have aimed myself).

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Tony Hoagland has won lots of awards including a Guggenheim, an O.B. Hardison Jr. Prize, and the Mark Twain Award, which recognizes humor in poetry. Humor and pith abound in Hoagland's work, but so does angst, anger, and tenderness. If anything, it's short on forgiveness, tending toward excoriation, but finally, Hoagland, who seems unable to ignore any detail of human frailty and failing, is full of curiosity and a kind of ruthless and scrupulous attention. There's nothing, not a body part, not an historic episode that is too embarrassing or taboo or touchy from which Hoagland would avert his gaze Sightline Payments Kirk SanfordLottery Results

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